I left my kindle on my office desk in the unlighted amazon cover. This morning I tried to turn it on and now there are
strange stripes all over the screen that do not disappear even after doing a complete reboot. Pictures are attached.

Yes, I'm afraid that's a classic picture of a broken screen substrate. The crack in the substrate is the diagonal line towards the bottom of the picture. Unfortunately this is not covered by the warranty.

I would still just contact Amazon and explain that it is broken and see what they say. Hopefully you will get hold of someone very helpful and nice.

Well my amazon ebook bill surely shows that I am a profitable customer! I contacted our building service. Who knows maybe they have an insurance that covers such cases. But then it's hard to prove that they broke it.

Call Amazon Kindle Customer Service and explained what happened. There have been several reported cases of them replacing a Kindle for no cost for a broken screen when they are still under warranty. See what they say.

PS, make sure you get Kindle Support specifically and not just the regular Customer Support line. They seem to be easier to work with.

Odd that it got broken whilst in a case though. The eInk screen is generally broken because something pushed on the screen, something hit the screen or the entire device was twisted. The cleaners might have dropped it when moving stuff around on your desk to clean I guess?

eInk screens have a plastic top layer but there are very thin glass layers inside. This means you can end up cracking or damaging an internal layer but still have a completely intact top layer. The diagonal lines are usually an indication that the glass inside has cracked and where they join up is generally where the impact or pressure was.

I had a kindle 2 that showed similar symptoms. I did not recall dropping it or anything. I called CS, described what it looked like, having no idea what it was or whether it was covered by warranty Amazon replaced it and paid shipping both ways.

Location: The Olympic Peninsula on the OTHER Washington! (the big green clean one on the west coast!)

Device: Kindle, the original! Times Two! and gifting an International Kindle

Quote:

Originally Posted by Tiersten

Odd that it got broken whilst in a case though. The eInk screen is generally broken because something pushed on the screen, something hit the screen or the entire device was twisted. The cleaners might have dropped it when moving stuff around on your desk to clean I guess?

eInk screens have a plastic top layer but there are very thin glass layers inside. This means you can end up cracking or damaging an internal layer but still have a completely intact top layer. The diagonal lines are usually an indication that the glass inside has cracked and where they join up is generally where the impact or pressure was.

I'm betting the same. I know there's at least one person over on the Amazon board who broke their screen because they thought it was a touchscreen and kept pushing on it trying to get it to work, so I can honestly imagine someone doing that if they don't know what the Kindle is, considering how pervasive touchscreen technology is these days. The Kindle screen isn't designed to withstand jabbing.